In recent years traditional service stations have evolved into elaborate point-of-sale (POS) facilities providing a wide variety of customer services, such as fuel dispensing, car washing, ATM access, money order access, and credit card or debit card transactions at the fueling environment. In a traditional fueling environment, card data supplied from a user purchasing fuel or other products and services is transmitted in an unprotected form from the dispenser at the forecourt to the point-of-sale (POS) system, and from the POS system to a network host which performs authentication of the card data. This allows unauthorized parties to easily intercept user card data by tampering with the transmission line, especially if the transmission line is Ethernet or a satellite link.
Although systems exist to secure a special tag or debit pin number using special key management in the dispenser, these systems require special hardware to prevent key tampering at the dispenser through the use of local key management. The special hardware is very costly and difficult to maintain. For example, in order to support a debit card, the dispenser needs to have a special secured pin pad, such as a Tamper Resist Security Module (TRSM) that requires special procedures to install and configure. In addition, these systems require special procedures to dispose of the pin pad when it needs to be replaced because once the key is disclosed, the pin number is no longer secured.
In recent years, it has become desirable in the fueling environment to offer advertisements and additional sales to customers from third party vendors. However, traditionally there has not been a method available to secure user card data information at the dispenser from the third party system.
In current fueling environments, there does not exist a way to secure communication control messages between systems or nodes in the fueling environment. In current fueling environments, a proprietary protocol is used to communicate among systems. If the protocol is obtained by an unauthorized user, the unauthorized user can take over control of the dispenser system. This can lead to potential fraud, such as the obtaining of fuel without payment or the theft of customer card data. The introduction of third party services within the fueling environment introduces an additional potential for unauthorized control of the dispenser system or POS system.